Alpha Beta: How 26 Letters Shaped the Western World: Amazon.co.uk: John Man: 9780747264477: Books

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Product Description

Times Educational Supplement: Book of the Week/ September 8, 2000

This book comes at the perfect moment... as we rediscover the importance in early reading of "cracking the alphabetic code." The story of how that code came into being is a fascinating one, and Man is the ideal writer to tell it. His scholarship seems boundless... he also has a journalist's ear for a story, beguiling us with innumerable asides. Best of all though is the story that inspired the book: the discovery in the early 1990's, of some signs cut into a rockface beyond Egypt's Valley of the Kings. It is straight out of Indiana Jones... Man's own theory... is a tour de force, linking the creation of the alphabet to the emergence in Sinai of that other Alpha and Omega - the God of Abraham and Moses, of Judaism, Christianity and Islam... This book is an opportunity to rediscover those 26 letters... and to marvel at a system of communication that for 4,000 years... has allowed readers freedom of access across time and space.

Sunday Telegraph

'absorbing tale.. many surprises on the way'

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Customer Reviews

9 Reviews

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
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Average Customer Review

3.3 out of 5 stars (9 customer reviews)

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good, but doesn't go far enough., 5 Jun 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Alpha Beta: How 26 Letters Shaped the Western World (Paperback)

This book is very much about the evolution of the Latin alphabet, and more or less stops after the Romans had finished its development in 200 BC or so. We get a quick tour of the history of the Cyrillic alphabet and its spread into non-Russian cultures, but next to nothing on how the Latin alphabet has been used in non-European countries. For example, the author tells us nothing about how Turkey changed from Arabic to Latin script in the 1920's, which has to be a tale worth telling. In an early section about how well different languages match spelling to sounds, he says that "Russsian isn't bad, because they had the benefit of a revolution", but fails to elaborate on that statement, either there or in the later chapter about Cyrillic.

Making this a book about the evolution of the Latin alphabet makes for a more straightforward story, but it left me wanting to know more about all the other alphabets out there, and how they ended up being so different from each other, despite sharing a common ancestry: alphabetic writing was only invented *once* and everyone else either copied their neighbour's alphabet or copied the idea of an alphabet from them.

Despite all of the above quibbles I did enjoy this book. The evolution of our alphabet is a fascinating story and John Man tells it well, but it is very much the story of *our* alphabet.

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars More than just the Alphabet, 14 Feb 2001

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matthewcoultas@hotmail.com (London) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Alpha Beta: How 26 Letters Shaped the Western World (Hardcover)

The book attempts to provide a history of the development of the western alphabet. Along the way it touches on many interesting and thought provoking side issues to do with the history of western civilisation and language. Written in a clear and light style the book is perfect for those of us not already familiar with this sector of history. A great read, and will probably keep you armed with interesting facts to fill any of those 'conversational gaps' which might strike in the coming year.

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4.0 out of 5 stars Alpha Beta, 17 Jan 2011

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Mrs. Rita D. Fidler "Rita D. Fidler" (Oxfordshire, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: Alpha Beta (Paperback)

I am very happy with this book, it is very interesting and will be very helpful in the colation of my talk which I am giving to our U3A next year.

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